JD Sports gets temporary reprieve for Go Outdoors, Cineworld secures new facility
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 71 points lower on Monday, having closed up 1.1% at 6,292.60 on Friday.
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Retailer JD Sports Fashion said it had secured a 10-day moratorium protecting its struggling Go Outdoors from legal action by creditors as it considered a number of “strategic options” for the chain, adding that it had not appointed administrators. Reports on the weekend said administration was imminent for Go Outdoors, bought for more than £100m four years ago and employs 2,300 people.
Cineworld said it had secured a new $250m debt facility to bolster its balance sheet as cinemas started to re-open around the world after Covid-19 lockdowns. The loan was arranged with private investors and has a maturity of 2023. Cineworld in May agreed covenant amendments and a $110m revolving credit facility increase. “With the easing of lockdown restrictions in key jurisdictions, Cineworld is excited to welcome customers back to cinemas and enjoy the best place to watch a movie,” the company said on Monday.
Segro has sold City Park Vienna, comprising a cross-dock warehouse, a recently developed urban warehouse park and development land, to Nuveen Real Estate. The FTSE 100 company said the asset sold for €65m (£58.79m), in line with December 2019 book value. It said the warehouses totalled 20,100 square metres of space, comprising an 8,200 square metre fully-let cross-dock facility, and a recently completed 11,900 square metre urban warehouse scheme, which is more than 40% let.
Newspaper round-up
The former chancellor Alistair Darling has urged the government to consider an emergency cut in VAT amid growing speculation that the Treasury will make a tax cut on consumer spending the centre of a plan to boost Britain’s post-Covid-19 recovery. Rishi Sunak will announce a package of measures in early July intended to help those sectors of the economy, such as retailing, recover from the impact of a three-month lockdown. - Guardian
Allison Taylor had a cash-only policy when she first opened the Pastiche gift shop on Ampthill’s high street 26 years ago, but the steady loss of ATMs and bank branches have made it harder to keep coins and notes flowing through the Bedfordshire town. “We had plenty of cashpoints, including across the road, and now things have changed,” she said, gesturing toward the boarded-up building opposite that had housed the town’s final NatWest bank branch. Its closure three years ago resulted in a drop in the number of people coming into town to do their banking and fewer customers for the many independent shops in Ampthill, which is the hub for about 15,000 people including nearby villages. - Guardian
Energy suppliers have been given the green light to start collecting money owed by customers by the industry watchdog. In a letter to suppliers, Ofgem said that while many customers were still struggling to pay bills because of the crisis, it understood that firms could not halt debt collection indefinitely. - Telegraph
The owner of British Gas is preparing to launch a new cut-price brand as it battles to revive its fortunes. Centrica has struck a deal to use a low-cost IT platform to run a digital-only “challenger” brand to try to win back customers who have deserted Britain’s biggest energy supplier and moved to cheap start-ups. - The Times
Britain will today tighten takeover rules to ensure that companies central to fighting the coronavirus pandemic do not fall prey to foreign bidders. Alok Sharma, the business secretary, will make amendments to the Enterprise Act 2002 to give ministers more powers to intervene in attempted takeovers of UK companies critical to fighting Covid-19. - The Times
US close
Equities finished in a mixed state on Wall Street on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 0.8% at 25,871.46.
The S&P 500 lost 0.56% to 3,097.74, while the Nasdaq Composite managed gains of 0.03% to 9,946.12.